Recently, I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine, and wound up making a statement along the lines of "Hey, when I hear someone talk nonsense, I'm intellectually obligated to notify them of that fact". To which my friend replied: "Oh, and I suppose you're the arbitrator of what is and isn't nonsense?"
This was a comeback I didn't have a ready reply for. It is abundantly clear to me that what is and isn't nonsense is well understood, yet not always made explicit.
This post is a means of defining, enumerating, and classifying nonsense, and various derivatives thereof. It is important in the topic of debate for the same reason that it's important to understand the classical logical fallacies. Being able to correctly identify when someone else is speaking nonsense is a good way to win a debate.
The corollary is that understanding the taxonomy of nonsense can help you identify when you yourself commit such an offense, and correct your stances or arguments appropriately. So let's get on with it.
A quick definition:
1) Lexical Nonsense
The most basic building block of written language is the character set. A really easy way of producing nonsense is to violate the accepted character set. The result is something which might appear to be a foreign language, but really isn't. For example...
[example pending]
The analog in spoken language is of course just babble. Such as this (humorous) clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8
2) Syntactic Nonsense
Merely using characters from an accepted character set is of course not sufficient to avoid nonsense, however. One can assemble those characters into words which do not have accepted meaning. The result is nonsense, for example...
3) Grammatical Nonsense
One can also use valid accepted words (which individually have meaning) and combine them in a sentence such that the result is nonsense. This is accomplished by stringing together entirely unrelated words, which violate the grammatical rules of the language. For example...
4) Semantic Nonsense
This is where things get interesting. It's possible to arrange a sentence with words such that it loses meaning due to context. This type of nonsense can be difficult to spot, since it often requires knowledge of the subject matter to identify it.
This is different than grammatical nonsense in that semantic nonsense loses its meaning only after inspection. The sentence(s) in question may very well appear to have meaning until one thinks about it long enough.
Then, after you think about it for a moment... you come to the realization that you don't even know what the question is asking. It is devoid of meaning. It is nonsense.
5) Incoherence
Incoherence is what happens when an idea very nearly forms and is communicated, but falls short. This is very often due to a lack of ability on the part of the communicator, such as:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WALIARHHLII
Incoherent nonsense is certainly an apt description of the above. Maybe somewhere in there was an idea, but it failed to be communicated.
Incoherence, unfortunately, can be used maliciously by scam artists. They will use incoherence to appear an expert in a subject they are not, or invent a new subject altogether. Some have come to call this "Woo Woo", a term I've never liked. But here's an excellent example:
http://www.foundationforglobalhumanity.org/twelfth-transdimensional-level
Here's a little snippet from that page:
Though that paragraph above may syntactically to be coherent, it is not. None of that rambling had the slightest bit of meaning. It is just a series of words mashed together which might appear to have meaning, if you don't know what black holes, atoms, dimensions, or connections are.
6) Inconsistence
Otherwise known as contradiction. If a statement or idea is inherently contradictory, it ceases to have meaning. And as you might have guessed, making contradictory claims are bread and butter to those in politics. George Orwell labeled this "Doublethink", or the act of simultaneously holding as true two mutually exclusive ideas. For example...
7) Vacuous Statements
This one is tricky. You see, something can be both "true" and nonsense. A vacuous statement is one which is true, but has no teeth. Such as...
The fun part comes in when you manage to hide the fact that a statement is vacuous. Many people are able to hide weak arguments by doing this. A simple technique is to throw in a true vacuous statement which appears to support your cause. Your opposition will be unable to prove that the statement is false, and also fail to recognize that the statement is meaningless nonsense. For example...
[example pending]
This was a comeback I didn't have a ready reply for. It is abundantly clear to me that what is and isn't nonsense is well understood, yet not always made explicit.
This post is a means of defining, enumerating, and classifying nonsense, and various derivatives thereof. It is important in the topic of debate for the same reason that it's important to understand the classical logical fallacies. Being able to correctly identify when someone else is speaking nonsense is a good way to win a debate.
The corollary is that understanding the taxonomy of nonsense can help you identify when you yourself commit such an offense, and correct your stances or arguments appropriately. So let's get on with it.
A quick definition:
The important aspect of the definition is the absence of meaning. That will be a recurring theme throughout this post.Wikipedia said:
1) Lexical Nonsense
The most basic building block of written language is the character set. A really easy way of producing nonsense is to violate the accepted character set. The result is something which might appear to be a foreign language, but really isn't. For example...
[example pending]
The analog in spoken language is of course just babble. Such as this (humorous) clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8
2) Syntactic Nonsense
Merely using characters from an accepted character set is of course not sufficient to avoid nonsense, however. One can assemble those characters into words which do not have accepted meaning. The result is nonsense, for example...
Obviously this sentence has no meaning.
3) Grammatical Nonsense
One can also use valid accepted words (which individually have meaning) and combine them in a sentence such that the result is nonsense. This is accomplished by stringing together entirely unrelated words, which violate the grammatical rules of the language. For example...
No meaning.
But kind of funny, nonetheless.
4) Semantic Nonsense
This is where things get interesting. It's possible to arrange a sentence with words such that it loses meaning due to context. This type of nonsense can be difficult to spot, since it often requires knowledge of the subject matter to identify it.
This is different than grammatical nonsense in that semantic nonsense loses its meaning only after inspection. The sentence(s) in question may very well appear to have meaning until one thinks about it long enough.
The above question might initially seem to make sense. But the problem is with the word "why". It is a fact that the angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees. I could provide a rigorous proof of this fact. But that does not answer the "question" of why.
Then, after you think about it for a moment... you come to the realization that you don't even know what the question is asking. It is devoid of meaning. It is nonsense.
5) Incoherence
Incoherence is what happens when an idea very nearly forms and is communicated, but falls short. This is very often due to a lack of ability on the part of the communicator, such as:
pun intended
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WALIARHHLII
Incoherent nonsense is certainly an apt description of the above. Maybe somewhere in there was an idea, but it failed to be communicated.
Incoherence, unfortunately, can be used maliciously by scam artists. They will use incoherence to appear an expert in a subject they are not, or invent a new subject altogether. Some have come to call this "Woo Woo", a term I've never liked. But here's an excellent example:
http://www.foundationforglobalhumanity.org/twelfth-transdimensional-level
Here's a little snippet from that page:
Hub connection?!?! lawl, that's just awesome.
Though that paragraph above may syntactically to be coherent, it is not. None of that rambling had the slightest bit of meaning. It is just a series of words mashed together which might appear to have meaning, if you don't know what black holes, atoms, dimensions, or connections are.
6) Inconsistence
Otherwise known as contradiction. If a statement or idea is inherently contradictory, it ceases to have meaning. And as you might have guessed, making contradictory claims are bread and butter to those in politics. George Orwell labeled this "Doublethink", or the act of simultaneously holding as true two mutually exclusive ideas. For example...
...well which is it? The statement is nonsense!
7) Vacuous Statements
This one is tricky. You see, something can be both "true" and nonsense. A vacuous statement is one which is true, but has no teeth. Such as...
or
True, yes. But also meaningless. It is self contained. No other statements are contingent upon this one. The statement is of inconsequence. There is no conceivable reason to even make such a statement except to point out that it is vacuous.
The fun part comes in when you manage to hide the fact that a statement is vacuous. Many people are able to hide weak arguments by doing this. A simple technique is to throw in a true vacuous statement which appears to support your cause. Your opposition will be unable to prove that the statement is false, and also fail to recognize that the statement is meaningless nonsense. For example...
[example pending]
